Reflection on Work take Two

In the last post, I invited you to reflect a bit on work and to include many different definitions of work.

Work as something we sometimes get paid to do...sometimes not.
Work as including both what we do with our hands, but more so with our hearts, heads, and whole self.

Work can be weeding a garden.
Work can be listening to a friend.
Work can be attending a rally.
Work can be in a classroom, board room, building something, or dreaming new dreams.

It is unfortunate that we have so classified and categorized work into a narrow place of what we get a pay check to do.  When the only lens we use to think about work is economic, we get to a limited place.  When we expend to include other moments in our life, we start to enter the place of "vocation".  Vocation has as one of it's roots, "voice".  Vocation is that place were our voice sings in harmony with the world and others.  Vocation are the moments we take our part in the concert of the creation.  We are a part, a piece.  We are never the whole.  So, vocation connects us to a fabric.  Vocation is relational.

In our vocation, just like our jobs, there can be tension.  Even when we are singing out with full voice, we can still feel strain and stress because we are dealing with others. 

Sometimes we can present vocation or finding your purpose as a idyllic place.  Just find what you are called to do and it will be chocolate rivers and pony rides.  Not so much.

Even living out our deepest calling and being our fullest self, we will encounter others who are trying to do the same and there can be tension, even conflict.

I invite you to consider places where you felt your life singing out with gusto.
I invite you to consider times you felt most alive.
I invite you to also acknowledge even in the midst of that amazing moments, how it might not have been perfect.

In that messy middle moment, I believe there is more than a trace of God's grace.

Blessings ~~